A Model of the Dative/Accusative Opposition for Slavic Languages Based on Data from Aphasia

Bulgarian and Russian aphasia patients made approximately twice as many Dative/Accusative case-marker errors on verbs with generally inconsistent interlanguage case markings than on verbs whose interlanguage case marking is fairly consistent. These results suggest that paragrammatic case-marking errors reflect not purely morphological-level impairment, but rather a semantic deficit, i. e., impaired access to individual case-associated semantic features of the verb. Based on the data, it is proposed that „conflicting case marking“ verbs contain a fairly balanced proportion of both dative- and accusative-associated semantic features, and that the dative/accusative opposition is essentially a temporal one, based on the opposition [+/- cognitive engagement] on the part of the non-agent to the action presented by the verb.